


selfless/ish

by hikaie



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dissociation, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 17:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7516325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaie/pseuds/hikaie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shiro doesn’t want to look at Keith and see the hope there; like a question on a test he can’t answer. He doesn’t know how to tell him- can’t tell him- that that man is never coming back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	selfless/ish

**Author's Note:**

> I got an urge to write a little bit of... angst and PTSD feelings? Also toeing the waters with this fandom. I actually have something much longer and happier in progress but I wanted to write this pairing in particular. Rated T because I feel it's a bit heavy? Also, uh, I know I tagged it angst with a happy ending but I _guess_ it's ambiguous. I just wanted to get something short out so take from it what you will.

Shiro doesn’t want to look at Keith and see the hope there; like a question on a test he can’t answer. The hope that every flashback-turned-advantage is a step in the right direction. The old him. Shiro doesn’t know how to tell him- _can’t_ tell him- that that man is never coming back. He doesn’t know when it died, when _he_ died; the line had blurred somewhere between medical experimentation and being made to murder against his will.

He can act. Not very well, but convincingly enough. He’s a military man; they had preparation for this. (You might be captured. Here is what you will do. Here is what you won’t say. They might torture you. Here is how you keep your mouth shut. Never had there been a point in which they said ‘You will change. You will be different. You will never be the same.’) He feels like his body isn’t his own, more than the prosthetic; these reactions, the overwhelming dread and panic, the anger and the complete loss of his faculties… it isn’t him. He thinks it again and again; he’s not himself. He’s not _that_ person.

He’s not the person Keith fell in love with. (That is the axis by which he judges himself. Before and After is a dichotomy of when he dreamed of being with Keith again as a certainty and when he dreamed it as a fantasy, to power through the days that had no meaning elsewise.) He didn’t get through imprisonment without holding onto something. His memories are foggy but- not that foggy.

But he lies.

It hurts in the rawest, most aching way to watch Keith try to subtly insert himself into Shiro’s space. Testing the waters, trying to see if Shiro’s amnesia stretches that far back. And it _doesn’t_. Shiro remembers everything. (The little gap between his top two incisors towards the left, the mole on the back of his neck, the way he looks wearing Shiro’s pajama pants and nothing else.) He can’t be what Keith needs because he’s _not that man_ anymore.

 

When they lose him after the wormhole, Shiro regrets it all.

It’s not like he hadn’t, up until this point; piloting had suited Keith _terribly_. (Shiro had fallen for a boy whose quietness was written off as attitude. Breaking the shell would reveal a quick wit and loyalty. He was a born fighter; having him as his right arm in Voltron felt like he’d never lost the flesh and blood one.) From the moment he’d woken up in Keith’s bed all he’d wanted was to hold what had kept him going. Resisting was hard, but he _knew_ \- Keith would be disappointed in him. Keith was missing the Shiro that had gone to Kerberos; even the Shiro that had done somersaults in zero-G and chased after blobs of water while Keith watched from the safety of Earth, laughing. It wouldn’t take all that long for Keith to see… he wouldn’t love _this_ Shiro.

All of it seems so fucking stupid when they’re strewn across the universe.

It’s all the scarier when he patches into his comms and gets no response. From _anyone_.

Everything in him is screaming. Part of it is a mantra of _where’sKeithwhere’sKeith_ , knowing his lion is injured; another is trying to take the militaristic, calming approach. Instead, he favors the part of him that tells him to shut down. He just sits in the cockpit and shakes and feels overwhelmed with the panic.

“-iro?” His comm crackles. He comes to- he doesn’t even know how much later.

“Allura?” he croaks.

“Thank heavens. They’ve slowed us down, and Coran is double checking our systems, but we should be able to pick you all up shortly.”

“All of us?” His brain is still recovering from the jump and the panic.

“You all seem to be in separate locations. It’s a bit of a pain, but ultimately just an annoyance. I’m just so glad you’re all okay.” He tries to find some comfort in the relief in her voice, sagging into his seat and waiting out the rescue.

 

When they rescue Keith, Shiro wants to yell at him for insubordination. For putting himself in danger. For being so reckless.

He hugs him.

He hugs him so long Keith raises a hand against his back, just resting there. (Shiro shakes, trembles, wants to fall apart under his touch.) When they pull apart, he sees it there; that damnable hope.

Keith works his jaw, the way he does when he wants to say something but isn’t sure. It hurts; to have all this knowledge of his little quirks. (Chews on his tongue when he’s thinking; scuffs his foot when he’s impatient; eats mainly on his left side due to an off-sized filling on the right; plays with his hair when he’s engrossed in reading.) He wants to touch him; itches to fold him back into the hug, as far as their bodies can take. Further, even. He wants the mental fusion that Voltron brings, but always.

“You remembered?” His voice is so small, just for Shiro.

He lies, but it’s different. (He nods, because it’s selfish, because he needs him and he’ll tell him the whole truth later but this white lie is what he needs right now. What, he thinks, they both need.)

Keith kisses him and it feels like coming home. (His hand on his jaw, curling under the damp curls stuck to the back of his neck, touching on his mole. Right where he remembered.

He doesn’t cry, but it’s a near thing.)


End file.
